If adding mechs to Call of Duty led to Titanfall, and adding mechs to farm sims led to Lightyear Frontier, then does that make Lightyear Frontier the Titanfall of farm sims?
It’s a fairly tortured comparison, to be honest, but there is a smidgeon of truth behind it. After all, there’s an awful lot of people out there that love big stompy mechs, whether they’re coming from the Gundam school of design, Zoids, Transformers, or whatever else is out there, and so there’s almost certainly a fair bit of Lightyear Frontier that came about simply because mechs are cool. It’s just that, instead of the mech being the ultimate expression of your combat power and prowess, here it’s the ultimate expression of agriculture and construction.
Instead of inheriting a homestead and plot of land from your grandparents, Lighyear Frontier’s Early Access release starts by throwing you at a planet, crash landing on this alien planet and actually being separated from your mech. This doesn’t last long, though, as you quickly make your way to the main body of your mech, make some quick repairs and then get to stomp off to explore your immediate surroundings.
I love the general look of the mechs, coming across almost like a farmyard Transformer, were it not for the cockpit that you sit in at the top. In particular, the tractor-like engine and grill for the mech’s torso is a great touch, and there’s a good few options for new replacement parts and changing up the mech colour scheme as you play deeper into the game.
There’s other crash sites dotted around the nearby area, each of which will grand you one of the core tools that your mech has to offer. There’s a jabby axe saw for smashing up rocks, trees and other resources, a water gun for watering, seed and shoot planters, and a vacuum harvester for picking things (including water) up from a distance.
Between these tools, you have everything that you need to found your farm. Create raised planters for crops, shoot trees, flowers and bushes around to replace the ones you’re harvesting, and start to climb the ladder of crafting ever more capable production spots.
There’s that satisfying farming sim loop of throwing raw resources a furnace and having it spit out iron bars, which you can then take over to another point to make iron frames, electronics and parts for other constructions and mech upgrades. It’s not always entirely clear what you need to do to unlock the next step on the construction chain, but it’s something you can generally figure out and ‘brute force’ by collecting and manufacturing everything possible to make the next discovery.
Similarly familiar to farm game fans, you’ll plant various crops in those planters, and then have to make sure they’re watered each day (whether by rain or your water gun) for them to grow and be ready to harvest a few days later.
You’ll have to venture further afield to get all the resources you need, but this planet you’ve crashed on is in its own kind of ecological meltdown, with different areas plagued by strangely colour gloop, red weeds and more. This is where you whip out that super soaker or vacuum to wash them away or suck them out of the ground and let the natural flora return. Each area is also host to a few different types of fauna, and feeding their nests will see that region produce more resources for the following day – great if you need a bunch of red crystals to feed your production lines.
Exploration is closely tied to how much you’ve managed to upgrade your mech. Sure, you can generally just stomp around the world and reach new places, but to clear some of those regional blights, you’ll need to have first upgraded the water gun or vacuum to be stronger and more effective or efficient. There’s plenty more beside that, with expanding your inventory so you can keep sprinting and using the jet boosters, or increasing the duration of those jets to help you get around the world faster.
With several hours under our belt, and it feels like Lightyear Frontier is doing the basics right. The emphasis right now is really on building up your farm and stomping around in this agricultural mech, and that’s something you can share with others thanks to the inclusion of online co-op. I do wonder how far this concept will really go, though. The mech exploration and farming both provide a solid framework for the rest of the game and experience to grow around it through Early Access.
